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Motor City Cribs

MT photographer Doug Coombe has covered a lot of musical real estate under the heading of Motor City Cribs & Rides in the last year. He's hung out in the Ferndale bungalow-rehearsal spot-studio of Chad Thompson, keyboardist and vocalist for Johnny Headband. He's hung out in the Go bassist-guitarist John Krautner's grandfather's Berkley basement, which has been the band's rehearsal and studio space for a decade. Most charmingly he was at the crib of DJ Smoke (the Afrika Bambaata of Detroit) just as Smoke had to bolt over to Providence Hospital for the birth of his son Malcolm (which leads to a discussion of a whole different meaning of crib). In Milford, Doug dropped in on the loft apartment of Sean Lynch, of 800Beloved, a high-ceilinged space pictured above and overlooking Main Street, and almost as old as the town itself. And Doug checked in with Stoopz and Breeze and checked out the commanding view of their spot on the top floor of Detroit's Hotel Pontchartrain. "I'll be honest with you," Stoopz confessed, "I'm in it for the girls. And chicks dig the Pontchartrain." Doug, of course, is just in it for the chance to see how the musical half lives it up. And you can check out a gallery of his 2009 house calls in a slide show below.